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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Guns & Liberals

While reading various posts about the recent shootings in NY I came across a thoughtful and interesting post at Right On Blog entitled "On Guns and Recent Events". In the post James points out the typical reactions on the left to gun violence and their standard call for more gun controls and their habit of always pointing the finger at the gun and not at the individual responsible for the violence. They also have a way of twisting the events and blaming the right in the country for gun violence.

While commenting on James' post I remembered the day JFK was shot in Dallas. I was attending Northeast Louisiana State in Monroe and staying with my grandmother. My morning classes were over and I was taking a short nap that fateful afternoon. Grandmother came into the room and woke me up and told me to come quick that Kennedy had been shot. Needless to say, I like most Americans was glued to the T.V. for the rest of the day. Only three major news channels in those days---ABC, NBC and CBS. I quickly noticed a developing theme. One of the major news anchors, I don't recall which one, commented that Dallas had been a hot-bed of right wing activity in recent months. The vast Right-Wing-Conspiracy was being developed and the theme spread to all three networks. Everyone, myself included, believed it. Then Oswald was captured and information about him began to come out. Shocker---he was not a reactionary right wing loon, but rather a committed leftest. He had lived in Russia and was a member of a pro-Castro organization called "committee for fair play for Cuba". Suddenly, the vast right-wing conspiracy was gone. But did a left-wing conspiracy take its place--logic would dictate that--no, that did not ever happen. The silence on this was deafening. The national news media had long before that time shown their colors, but to me this was the first time I really took notice of the bias they expressed under the banner of "Objectivity". Finally I saw the truth. And the truth was an ugly reality.

I came across a short article on the Kennedy and that fateful day in Dallas, its basically the reactions of a left leaning newsman recalling the event. Decided to include it in this post:

"It Was Controlled PandemoniumI was on the copy desk, far from any action, but many things are indelible in my memory.We were living in Largo. I was about to leave for my shift, which was afternoon-evening, when a neighbor came running to the door, shouting for us to turn on our television. That’s when I learned he had been shot, but not that he was dead.I had to leave for work and there was no radio in the car. I took East Bay Drive, U.S. 19 and Haines Road to the Allendale area, and then drove through Allendale to Fourth Street. When I reached the corner, I saw a funeral home with its flag flying at half-staff, and I didn’t need a radio.The St. Petersburg Times newsroom was in controlled pandemonium. I don’t recall whether I handled any assassination copy that day; more likely, I was editing state and local news.But I was standing at the teletype when the first flash came in that a suspected Marxist, Lee Harvey Oswald, was being held in connection with the shooting. Times Publisher Nelson Poynter was standing nearby when I announced that.His face fell."Oh, no," he said. "I was hoping it would be a right-winger."In the days that followed, many of us helped ourselves to souvenirs: the half-tone engravings of John Kennedy that had accumulated in the library files. There came a time when we needed to illustrate articles that referred to the time, and we had to have new half-tones made because the ones already made had been so depleted.We were expecting our second child any day. Names had already been chosen, but there was no doubt that should it be a boy, his name would be John. That’s how Daniel became his middle name when he was born a week later."The key line in Dyckman's statement is "I WAS HOPING IT WOULD BE A RIGHT-WINGER." There was no way to spin this into a right-wing conspiracy because of the over-whelming evidence to the contrary. The left however, did manage to get stronger gun-control laws as a result of the events in Dallas. No more mail-order guns. One last note. I got my first gun a 22 rifle, when I was 11 years old---purchased it through the Sears and Roebuck Catalog. One of the happiest days of my life was when the mail carrier delivered it to the farm.by Ron Russell